Diana Taurasi was getting stood up.
She was supposed to be meeting director Katie Bender Wynn for the first time to discuss possibly working together on a documentary about the former WNBA star's life.
But Bender Wynn was a no-show. Or so Taurasi thought as she sat and waited at Provision, a coffee shop in Phoenix.
Nearly 400 miles away, Bender Wynn also waited -- at Playa Provisions near Manhattan Beach, California.
Taurasi owns homes in both cities, but had flown back to Phoenix. It took the two a few texts to realize that hadn't been relayed to Bender Wynn. They quickly hopped on a call and couldn't stop laughing.
"That was the first time we both felt like we'd been stood up," Bender Wynn said of the missed meeting two years ago. "It was funny, and we had a long chat on the phone. Straight away, it just felt very natural between us.
"So then when I met her in person, she said, 'I feel like I've known you my whole life.'"
For the past 18 months, Bender Wynn chronicled Taurasi's life as her illustrious career with the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury and the U.S. women's national team came to a close. Cameras captured Taurasi's final Olympic game in Paris, her drive to PHX Arena for her last regular-season WNBA game and her retirement media tour in New York City.
The result is "Taurasi," a three-part docuseries that will be released Thursday on Prime Video. Each episode documents specific time periods of Taurasi's life. The first episode covers her childhood, winning three NCAA titles at UConn and becoming the first pick in the 2004 WNBA draft. The second covers Taurasi's time in Russia -- where she played for Russian businessman Shabtai Kalmanovich, who was later murdered (the docuseries includes an interview with his driver, who had never before spoken publicly about Kalmanovich's murder) -- and her relationship with wife, Penny Taylor. The third covers Taurasi's doping scandal in Turkey, her career with the Mercury and her time on the 2024 Olympic team, including not playing in the gold medal game.
Before starting the project, Bender Wynn, an Australian filmmaker, didn't know who Taurasi was. But after meeting her for the first time, Bender Wynn knew instantly that Taurasi was one of a kind.
"The unfortunate thing about Dee's career is that it happened at a time when social media wasn't a factor," UConn coach Geno Auriemma told ESPN. "So a lot of people never got to see the amazing things that she did."
Those closest to her were surprised that the famously private Taurasi agreed to share her life with the world. Older sister Jessika Skillern didn't think Taurasi would agree to the documentary when she was initially approached.
"She's exactly like my dad," Skillern told ESPN. "They're very quiet. They're very private. She rarely talks about personal life to anyone.
"I think she was in a time in her life where I think she's a little more vulnerable and wanted to let people in to see she's not always the asshole."
Mercury president Vince Kozar, who has known Taurasi for two decades and appears in the docuseries, said Taurasi wanted the project to be authentic -- flaws and controversies included.
"In the 20 years I've known her, she's never been anything but herself," Kozar told ESPN. "And what you see is what you get. She's not trying to convince anyone of anything."
As the WNBA's all-time leading scorer and the player fans voted the WNBA "GOAT" in 2021, much of Taurasi's story has already been told. However, "Taurasi" peeled back the curtain at times, offering unknown glimpses into her life. Here are four things we learned in "Taurasi."
From Chino to Argentina and back again
Taurasi grew up in Chino, California, and is a well-documented Los Angeles Lakers fan. But in 1992, when Taurasi was 10 years old, her parents, Mario and Lily Taurasi, moved the family back to Argentina, where they had immigrated from. In the United States, basketball had started to become an integral part of Diana's life by then but was all but non-existent, especially for girls, in the South American country. Even though Diana and Jessika were surrounded by family, those first few months in Argentina were hard.
Then one day, three masked men ransacked their home and beat up Mario. For as happy as the move had made Mario and Lily, and for as much family surrounded them in Argentina, they moved back to Chino after almost two years.
That eventually led Diana to Storrs.
"All the sacrifices we made leaving Argentina were worth it to see her play at UConn," Skillern said.
Undervalued and undermarketed
Throughout "Taurasi," Bender Wynn continuously looked at Taurasi's worth and maintained a theme: She was undervalued by the WNBA.
Sue Bird, Taurasi's former UConn and Olympic teammate, said Taurasi, full of "swag," "confidence" and "one liners," was "incredibly undermarketed."
"She was the WNBA's jackpot but she never got the chance to really live into that," Bird said. "They were trying to go the opposite way of what Dee was bringing."
Part of that was the finances of playing in the WNBA. Taurasi made $42,000 as a rookie -- before taxes, Taurasi pointed out with a smirk -- but made between 16 and 18 times that, excluding bonuses, in Russia.
There were years, Taurasi said, that she was "bitter" about coming back to the WNBA in the summers to play in a league that didn't pay as well or take care of the players as well as the Russian leagues did. But she felt a responsibility to keep playing in the WNBA.
"It was a sense of you're doing this for the greater good of women's basketball and the next generation and the next generation, which, as women athletes, you're handcuffed to for life," Taurasi said. "I think our generation was one of just do the hard work and go with it, and we didn't complain about everything.
"And I wish I would've complained more."
The early days of Taurasi's relationship with Taylor
One of Bender Wynn's goals with "Taurasi" was to capture her love of her family, and the docuseries dives into Diana's courtship of wife Penny Taylor, who became her Mercury teammate in 2004. There were "snapshots," Taylor said, of connections through their time on the team. Eventually, feelings developed from both of them, and Taurasi initiated a conversation.
"She doesn't let down her guard very often, and so when she opened up to me like that and let me in a little bit, it was like a really huge step," Taylor said. "It was obviously a mutual feeling."
Taylor was married at the time, and the guilt weighed on her, but she said she couldn't ignore how she felt.
"Diana and I found in each other something that we loved, and we got married," Taylor said. "Since then, it's just been us. Looking back, I probably always loved Diana."
When Taurasi played in Russia and Taylor in Turkey, Taurasi would fly to see Taylor on her off days, which often consisted of 24 hours or less.
That, Taylor said, confirmed Taurasi's feelings for her.
A golden snub
When Taurasi was selected to the Olympic team, some saw it as a controversial pick over Caitlin Clark. Bird saw it as an obvious choice -- as did Taurasi, who previously had not opened up about not playing in the gold medal game in Paris.
"When I see Dee get picked [to the U.S. roster], she's there to lead," Bird said. "She's there to calm everyone down when sh-- gets weird because sh--'s gonna get weird. It always does."
Said Taurasi, who won her sixth Olympic gold medal in Paris: "To be honest, I never even really thought about it. I always felt like I deserved to be on the team because it was my team for 20 years and I know how to get the job done."
Then the gold medal game happened.
Through the Olympic semifinals, Taurasi had a bit role for coach Cheryl Reeve, playing a total of 55 minutes, 50 seconds over the first five games of the tournament. That number didn't change in the gold medal game, a one-point victory over France, because Taurasi never came off the bench.
She kept looking at Bird, whose seat was across the court from Taurasi's spot on the bench with a look Bird described as "I don't know what the hell is going on."
"This was the game she was actually brought here for," Bird said.
As the game progressed, Taurasi thought to herself: "You're not even going to get me on for a little bit."
It was a game that Taurasi described as a "big mind f---" for the United States, one that was going 100 mph -- one that 12 years of playing in Europe had primed Taurasi for.
"I'm confused by what happened," Taurasi said. "I never got, 'Hey, you're not going to play because we're going this direction.' Sounds good, I can live with that.
"But I didn't get that. Maybe it was just my time to get the raw end of the stick."
The Americans pulled out the win, Taurasi won her record sixth gold medal, and she was able to celebrate with her family, including her dad, who was "f---ing pissed."
"I've done this five other times where I felt like I really earned it," she said. "This one was the one that doesn't belong."